LoveroftheBhagavata

I wonder why such a colossal squandering of resources is being indulged in, when far more noble and pragmatic endeavours could be brought to fruition with these millions upon millions of dollars. And all this on what is arguably the least important and most controversial part of the Bhagavata Purana, the empirically unprovable and unverifiable mythic cosmology of the fifth canto. Let the professional astronomers explain the cosmos, that is not the job of religionists. Striving to reach out to God is, on the other hand.

Induji and xexon,

You are both correct if looked at from differing viewpoints, and whilst being a yogi is no small achievement, Sai Baba definitely goes over the top when he allows his gullible followers to place him on the same pedestal as God. As such, I can only endorse Indulekha's position slightly more. The greatest impersonalist of twentieth-century India, Bhagavan Ramana Maharshi, is worshipped by his disciples as a Guru and Jivan-mukta, never sAkshAd Brahma.

Is that a lingam or a salagrama in that photo, Beggar-ji? Looks like lingam to me... is Tulasi ever offered to Lord Shiva?

 

No. Once during an interesting pastime, Tulasi was put at the feet of Lord Shiva. She cried that she didn't like these feet

Of course these are all transcendental pastimes. But generally we offer bilva leaves at the feet of Lord Shiva.

 

Haribol my friends,

There is in fact one famous exception to this rule, Vaidyanath Dhama in Parali, Maharashtra (there is another tirtha that goes by the same name in Devghar, Jharakhanda). Just bother to go through this inspiring quote:

Just as Parali is a place of pilgrimage for Shiva devotees, it is also a meeting point for Hari Hara. In this mixed holy place, Lord Krishna’s festivals too are celebrated along with Lord Shankara’s festivals, with great festivity. The water from the Harihar Teerth is brought for the daily worship of Vaidyanath. Every Monday devotees gather here in great numbers.

On Chaitra Padva, Vijayadashani, Tripuri Pournima, Maha Shivaratri and Vaikunth Chaturdashi, big celebrations take place. During these celebrations, there is no distinction between Bel and Tulsi. Mahadev is offered Tulsi leaves and Vishnu is offered Bel leaves. This unique practice is seen only in Vaidyanath. During the rainy season (Sravan) worship of Vaidyanath, the entire area of Parali echoes with the chanting of Rudrabhisheka Mantrochchar. The regular Puja is also done with great devotion and dedication.

Click here for the full article - http://www.shaivam.org/siddhanta/sp/spjyoti_vaidyanath.htm

Much of the turmoil in today's world is based upon lineage.

 

While its okay to explore this for knowledge sake, one has to be very careful not to exalt one race or people over another.

 

 

x

I am fully in concordance with you. However, we are talking here about hard scientific facts, which to me, take prevalence any day over "soft" scholarship in disciplines such as philology and linguistics, which are open to a wide variety of interpretations. On the other hand, archaelogy, archaeo-astronomy, biology and geography all basically achieve consensus as to Indian culture and religion behind thousands of years older than what is currently accepted.

Definitely not!

Lord Shiva is NOT a demigod. The Brhad Bhagavatamrita explains that to do so would be the greatest offense. No one can ever attain the position of Lord Shiva, although they can attain the position of Lord Brahma.

Kulapavana prabhu's answer is wonderful.

So is yours, Indulekhaji. You can always be counted upon to make a refreshing addition to pre-existing points in any discussion.

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna

Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

Hare Rama Hare Rama

Rama Rama Hare Hare

Please Dark Warrior,

Your "pramana" is so extremely selectively picked out that I'm just speechless, considering that ten times more matter could be presented supporting that far more rational and plausible mythos that Parabrahman is literally nirguna and nirakara, with all major Deities representing various features of HIM-ABOUT-WHOM-NAUGHT-MAY-BE-SAID. However, I'm violently not into these cutting and pasting antics, for they seem just far too tacky for me. I respect your commitment to your line, but I just loathe the notion of shutting myself in one specific sect and by implication essentially dismiss all other metaphysics as secondary or inferior. I have myself spent well over a decennary in Bengali Vaishnavism, and thus I was for many long spans perfectly in tune with the Vaishnavite stories on much of what you've stated on this thread, with "stories" being the operative term. To my mind, the greatest transcendentalists of recent times were stalwart Advaitins who were truly cosmic, one could say, in realisation, and who were diametrically opposed to the narrow-mindedness of certain sectarians. Great saints of the calibre of Swami Sivanandaji Maharaja and his main disciples Krishnananda and Chidananda, Sri Ramana Maharshi, Swami Omkarananda, and Chidananda Saraswatiji Maharaja spring to mind immediately. And the most wonderful thing is, the holistic methodologies favoured by these swamis by means of a most practical combination of bhakti, jnana, yoga, and karma to aid one in attaining Truth is in sharp contradiction with the sole reliance on devotional feeling of the traditional Vaishnava schools of thought. Therefore, may Lord Vishnu always bless and protect you, but please excuse if Hari-bhakti is only one of any number of equally valid methods as far as I am concerned.

Hari Om Tat Sat

Aum Namah Shivaya

yA devI sarva bhuteshu shakti rUpeNa samsthitA namastasyai namastasyai namastasyai namo namaH

In that case, you have concocted a meaning of the Sariraka Bhasya that nobody else in the world has been able to decipher. Talk about self-serving myths. Sankara himself wore the tripundra, not the urdhva that your co-religionists adorn themselves with. Ask anyone at the Kamakoti Peetha what they make of your stance. Which is why I shall always maintain that SOME Vaishnavas can be called the babies amongst spiritualists, and that is also why they make me laugh so heartily.

Did you know that Acharya Sankara himself was a Vaishnavite? He advocated worship, or rather Vishnu only, as the supreme self. Vaishnavism is not only personal. Impersonal realisation of Vishnu is also Vaishnavism.

 

Around the 16th century, some shaivas have manufactured works like Saundarya Lahiri and passed it off as Sri Sankara's works. This has been proven by non-vaishnava scholars who are unbiased in their approach.

 

All the core works of Sri Sankaracharya - the Prasthna Trayam, advocate Vasudeva as the highest Brahman.

 

Standard Vaishnavite propaganda. Sorry if I don't swallow it, nor do any Shankarites worth that appellation. Have the last word if you wish to, I'm just tired of getting into the same arguments time and again. Be happy in your Vishnu worship and forgive me if I say that I'd rather turn into a beef-eating atheist than return to such narrow, personal god ideologies. Farewell.

Lover of the Bhagavata, I am not a Vaishnava but I think you are wrong to refer to Ramanuja's and Madhva's interpretations of sacred text as laughable. To assert that Shankara's commentary is superior without identifiable criteria of superiority has no meaning. You cannot construct a debate on that basis. My impression has been that Shankara is stronger on the Upanishads but not on the Gita where Ramanuja seems closer to the spirit of the text. But that is also just an opinion.

 

And if you will accept a little advice: I think you should try to modify the way in which you address those you disagree with. You don't persuade people by rudeness and persons like myself who are more or less neutral get an unfavourable impression of your own path. If adhering to Advaita makes people rude, intolerant and aggressive then questions arise about its spiritual content. I don't think I would like to be that way inclined.

It is not the take that these acharyas adopt on shastra per se that I was focusing on, but the debate winning and defeating plus the conversion mythologies that have been built around Vaishnavism, and which are nigh impossible to substantiate with historical evidence. Modern day Vaishnavas cannot help boasting about how many Advaitins they supposedly converted back then, when Sankarites whom I know could not care less about such issues. As far as I am concerned, even if I were alone in the universe in my belief system, that would be just fine. Nobody is capable of more venom towards other faiths than those who believe in personal deities, for these people sweep the unity of everything in creation under the carpet, and stress distinction, in all of the Vaishnava variants that we know. Such approaches seldom lead their adherents to ultimate harmony.

Lord Shiva is most certainly NOT a demigod. No one can become Shiva. He is primeval, eternal, and part of Lord Vishnu. The offenders who consider Him a mere demigod like Indra or Candra are completely ignorant of the shastra.

Haribol, Kulapavanaji. One of the reasons why I was in Gaudiya Vaishnavism for several years is because it had always appealed to me a lot more than the South Indian sampradayas, on account of its syncretist tendency. Sure, I am no longer a Chaitanyaite, but your religion has left an influence on my psyche which is truly indelible. I would imagine that to any thoughtful individual, as one draws nearer to God, a sense of harmony and universalism should develop at the expense of our lower natures more prone to discord than unity. One sees the exact opposite in some personalistic traditions, and hence, I shall always assert that of all the devotional cults, GV prevails as the mighty, undisputed monarch. Its far broader geographical and intercultural presence than either Vishishtadvaita or Dvaita amply attests to this. The nonsense which we get to witness on this forum is largely the product of a defective comprehension of Gaudiya theology. To me, you along with JN Prabhu epitomise about the very best of Krishna consciousness that is visible on Audarya, and if only more Vaishnavas could manifest similar symptoms, it is the movement of Shri Chaitanya as a whole that would be immensely benefited.

Dark Warrior is certainly to be respected for his markedly more mature disposition than tackleberry (with a small t), however, he also displays his characteristic Vaishnava sectarianism by trying to shove the Sri interpretation down our throats, when everyone even remotely acquainted with the Vedantic tradition knows full well that the personalistic conception of Vishnu as supreme can only be upholded by ignoring vast portions of Veda, and only emphasising a few, lesser sources of pramana. The fact is, Vaishnavas can claim prominence over other schools and propagate their biased and often comical views as much as they want, neither Ramanuja nor Madhva come anywhere near Sri Sankara as far as mastery over Vedanta is concerned. It is only their own followers who buy into their myths wholesale. As for non-Vaishnavas disagreeing with one another, difference of opinion is more often than not a healthy thing. However, some Vaishnavas display a pettiness, cheapness and ignorance that one would be hard-pressed to find in any other sect, whether Shaiva, Advaita, Shakta, Buddhist etc.

For confirmation of this, anyone can simply take a quick trip to a part of cyberspace where a Shaiva, Tantrik Yoga or Advaitic forum is hosted, and the contrast between the civility and tranquilness there and what we have here shall be obvious to one and all. With this, I'm outta here.

Tackleberry is a Madhvaite, so no surprises as to his humorous "exposition". My offer to him still stands good. I have scores of documents on Advaita Vedanta which in no uncertain terms tell of the foolishness of attempting imaginary demarcations between different deities, as they are all Brahman manifest. Ask Baobabtree how many such files I've sent him, Tackle. If you want to open your mind to something other than the Dvaiti falsehoods you have been indoctrinated with, just buzz. And since I am fatigued of casting pearls before swines, do not expect me to respond here. If you want to take the debate further, that can be done privately. You can send a message.

The second study of 2003, a particularly detailed one dealing with the genetic heritage of India’s earliest settlers, had seventeen co-authors with Kivisild (including L. Cavalli-Sforza and P. A. Underhill), and relied on nearly a thousand samples from the subcontinent, including two Dravidian-speaking tribes from Andhra Pradesh.15 Among other important findings, it stressed that the Y-DNA haplogroup “M17,” regarded till recently as a marker of the Aryan invasion, and indeed frequent in Central Asia, is equally found in the two tribes under consideration, which is inconsistent with the invasionist framework. Moreover, one of the two tribes, the Chenchus, is genetically close to several castes, so that there is a “lack of clear distinction between Indian castes and tribes,” a fact that can hardly be overemphasized.

This also emerges from a diagram of genetic distances between eight Indian and seven Eurasian populations, distances calculate on the basis of 16 Y-DNA haplogroups (Fig. 1). The diagram challenges many common assumptions: as just mentioned, five castes are grouped with the Chenchus; another tribe, the Lambadis (probably of Rajasthani origin), is stuck between Western Europe and the Middle East; Bengalis of various castes are close to Mumbai Brahmins, and Punjabis (whom one would have thought to be closest to the mythical “Aryans”) are as far away as possible from Central Asia! It is clear that no simple framework can account for such complexity, least of all the Aryan invasion / migration framework.

The next year, Mait Metspalu and fifteen co-authors analyzed 796 Indian (including both tribal and caste populations from different parts of India) and 436 Iranian mtDNAs.16 Of relevance here is the following observation, which once again highlights the pitfalls of any facile ethnic-linguistic equation:

We finally jump to 2006 and end with two studies. The first was headed by Indian biologist Sanghamitra Sengupta and involved fourteen other co-authors, including L. Cavalli-Sforza, Partha P. Majumder, and P. A. Underhill.17 Based on 728 samples covering 36 Indian populations, it announced in its very title how its findings revealed a “Minor Genetic Influence of Central Asian Pastoralists,” i.e. of the mythical Indo- Aryans, and stated its general agreement with the previous study. For instance, the authors rejected the identification of some Y-DNA genetic markers with an “Indo- European expansion,” an identification they called “convenient but incorrect ... overly simplistic.” To them, the subcontinent’s genetic landscape was formed much earlier than the dates proposed for an Indo-Aryan immigration: “The influence of Central Asia on the pre-existing gene pool was minor. ... There is no evidence whatsoever to conclude that Central Asia has been necessarily the recent donor and not the receptor of the R1a lineages.” This is also highly suggestive (the R1a lineages being a different way to denote the haplogroup M17).

Finally, and significantly, this study indirectly rejected a “Dravidian” authorship of the Indus-Sarasvati civilization, since it noted, “Our data are also more consistent with a peninsular origin of Dravidian speakers than a source with proximity to the Indus....” They found, in conclusion, “overwhelming support for an Indian origin of Dravidian speakers.”

Another Indian biologist, Sanghamitra Sahoo, headed eleven colleagues, including T. Kivisild and V. K. Kashyap, for a study of the Y-DNA of 936 samples covering 77 Indian populations, 32 of them tribes.18 The authors left no room for doubt:

So the southward gene flow that had been imprinted on our minds for two centuries was wrong, after all: the flow was out of, not into, India. The authors continue:

The last of the two rejected associations is that of the Indo-Aryan expansion; the first, that of the spread of agriculture, is the well-known thesis of Colin Renfrew,19 which traces Indo-European origins to the beginnings of agriculture in Anatolia, and sees Indo-Europeans entering India around 9000 BP, along with agriculture: Sanghamitra Sahoo et al. see no evidence of this in the genetic record.

The same data allow the authors to construct an eloquent table of genetic distances between several populations, based on Y-haplogroups (Fig. 2). We learn from it, for instance, that “the caste populations of ‘north’ and ‘south’ India are not particularly more closely related to each other (average Fst value = 0.07) than they are to the tribal groups (average Fst value = 0.06),” an important confirmation of earlier studies. In particular, “Southern castes and tribals are very similar to each other in their Y-chromosomal haplogroup compositions.” As a result, “it was not possible to confirm any of the purported differentiations between the caste and tribal pools,” a momentous conclusion that directly clashes with the Aryan paradigm, which imagined Indian tribes as adivasis and the caste Hindus as descendants of Indo-Aryans invaders or immigrants.

In reality, we have no way, today, to determine who in India is an “adi”-vasi, but enough data to reject this label as misleading and unnecessarily divisive.

It is, of course, still possible to find genetic studies trying to interpret differences between North and South Indians or higher and lower castes within the invasionist framework, but that is simply because they take it for granted in the first place. None of the nine major studies quoted above lends any support to it, and none proposes to define a demarcation line between tribe and caste. The overall picture emerging from these studies is, first, an unequivocal rejection of a 3500-BP arrival of a “Caucasoid” or Central Asian gene pool. Just as the imaginary Aryan invasion / migration left no trace in Indian literature, in the archaeological and the anthropological record, it is invisible at the genetic level. The agreement between these different fields is remarkable by any standard, and offers hope for a grand synthesis in the near future, which will also integrate agriculture and linguistics.

Secondly, they account for India’s considerable genetic diversity by using a time- scale not of a few millennia, but of 40,000 or 50,000 years. In fact, several experts, such as Lluís Quintana-Murci,20 Vincent Macaulay,21 Stephen Oppenheimer,22 Michael Petraglia,23 and their associates, have in the last few years proposed that when Homo sapiens migrated out of Africa, he first reached South-West Asia around 75,000 BP, and from here, went on to other parts of the world. In simple terms, except for Africans, all humans have ancestors in the North-West of the Indian peninsula. In particular, one migration started around 50,000 BP towards the Middle East and Western Europe:

“indeed, nearly all Europeans — and by extension, many Americans — can trace their ancestors to only four mtDNA lines, which appeared between 10,000 and 50,000 years ago and originated from South Asia.” 24

Oppenheimer, a leading advocate of this scenario, summarizes it in these words:

We will not call it, of course, an “Indian invasion” of Europe; in simple terms, India acted “as an incubator of early genetic differentiation of modern humans moving out of Africa.”26

Genetics is a fast-evolving discipline, and the studies quoted above are certainly not the last word; but they have laid the basis for a wholly different perspective of Indian populations, and it is most unlikely that we will have to abandon it to return to the crude racial nineteenth-century fallacies of Aryan invaders and Dravidian autochthons. Neither have any reality in genetic terms, just as they have no reality in archaeological or cultural terms. In this sense, genetics is joining other disciplines in helping to clean the cobwebs of colonial historiography. If some have a vested interest in patching together the said cobwebs so they may keep cluttering our history textbooks, they are only delaying the inevitable.

*

References & Notes

1

Franz Boas, Race, Language and Culture (New York: Macmillan, 1912).

2

Ashley Montagu, Man’s most dangerous myth: The fallacy of race (New York: Columbia

University Press, 1942).

3

Let us mention three important papers: (1) B. E. Hemphill, J. R. Lukacs & K. A. R. Kennedy,

“Biological adaptations and affinities of the Bronze Age Harappans,” in Harappa

Excavations 1986-1990: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Third Millennium Urbanism, ed.

R. H. Meadow (Madison: Prehistory Press, 1991), pp. 137-182. (2) Kenneth A. R. Kennedy,

“Have Aryans been identified in the prehistoric skeletal record from South Asia?” in The

Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia, ed. George Erdosy (Berlin & New York: Walter de

Gruyter, 1995), pp. 32-66. (3) Brian E. Hemphill, Alexander F. Christensen & S. I.

Mustafakulov, “Trade or Travel: An Assessment of Interpopulational Dynamics among

Bronze Age Indo-Iranian Populations,” South Asian Archaeology, 1995, ed. Raymond

Allchin & Bridget Allchin (New Delhi: Oxford & IBH Publishing, 1997), vol. 2, pp. 855-

871.

4

See for instance Michael Witzel, “Autochthonous Aryans? The Evidence from Old Indian

and Iranian Texts,” Electronic Journal of Vedic Studies, vol. 7 (2001), No. 3 (25 May), § 8.

5

For a fuller discussion of this and other paradoxes of the Aryan invasion theory, see Michel

Danino, L’Inde et l’invasion de nulle part: le dernier repaire du mythe aryen (Paris: Les

Belles Lettres, 2006), forthcoming in English as The Invasion That Never Was, 3rd ed.

6

Ram Sharan Sharma, Advent of the Aryans in India (New Delhi: Manohar, 2001), p. 52.

7

See a few examples in The Indian Human Heritage, ed. D. Balasubramanian & N. Appaji

Genetics and the Aryan Debate / p. 12

Rao (Hyderabad: Universities Press, 1998).

8

This is the case of L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, of Stanford University, co-author of a “classic” work

which, as regards India, did not dare to question the invasionist framework: L. L. Cavalli-

Sforza, P. Menozzi & A. Piazza, The History and Geography of Human Genes (Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 1994); twelve years later, Cavalli-Sforza co-authored two papers

that rejected this framework, see notes 15 & 17 below. Another case is that of the Indian

biologist Partha P. Majumder (see notes 12 & 17 below).

9

T. Kivisild, M. J. Bamshad, K. Kaldma, M. Metspalu, E. Metspalu, M. Reidla, S. Laos, J.

Parik, W. S. Watkins, M. E. Dixon, S. S. Papiha, S. S. Mastana, M. R. Mir, V. Ferak, R.

Villems, “Deep common ancestry of Indian and western-Eurasian mitochondrial DNA

lineages” in Current Biology, 18 November 1999, 9(22):1331-4. (Most of the articles quoted

in this paper are available on the Internet; to locate them, enter their full title in a good search

engine.)

10

“Caucasoid” is a nineteenth-century term for a member of the white race, coined at a time

when the Caucasus was thought to be the homeland of the Indo-Europeans. The term has no

scientific meaning but has stuck, and is still used occasionally by biologists, although, as

further quotations will show, often within quotation marks, as a reminder of its inadequacy.

11

T. R. Disotell, “Human evolution: the southern route to Asia” in Current Biology, vol. 9, No.

24, 16 December 1999, pp. R925-928(4).

12

Susanta Roychoudhury, Sangita Roy, Badal Dey, Madan Chakraborty, Monami Roy, Bidyut

Roy, A. Ramesh, N. Prabhakaran, M. V. Usha Rani, H. Vishwanathan, Mitashree Mitra,

Samir K. Sil & Partha P. Majumder, “Fundamental genomic unity of ethnic India is revealed

by analysis of mitochondrial DNA,” Current Science, vol. 79, No. 9, 10 November 2000, pp.

1182-1192.

13

Toomas Kivisild, Surinder S. Papiha, Siiri Rootsi, Jüri Parik, Katrin Kaldma, Maere Reidla,

Sirle Laos, Mait Metspalu, Gerli Pielberg, Maarja Adojaan, Ene Metspalu, Sarabjit S.

Mastana, Yiming Wang, Mukaddes Golge, Halil Demirtas, Eckart Schnakenberg, Gian

Franco de Stefano, Tarekegn Geberhiwot, Mireille Claustres & Richard Villems, “An Indian

Ancestry: a Key for Understanding Human Diversity in Europe and Beyond”, ch. 31 of

Archaeogenetics: DNA and the population prehistory of Europe, ed. Colin Renfrew & Katie

Boyle (Cambridge: McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 2000), pp. 267-275.

14

Toomas Kivisild, Siiri Rootsi, Mait Metspalu, Ene Metspalu, Juri Parik, Katrin Kaldma,

Esien Usanga, Sarabjit Mastana, Surinder S. Papiha & Richard Villems, “The Genetics of

Language and Farming Spread in India,” ch. 17 in Examining the farming/language

dispersal hypothesis, eds. Peter Bellwood & Colin Renfrew (Cambridge: McDonald Institute

for Archaeological Research, 2003), pp. 215–222. Italics in one of the quotations are in the

original.

15

T. Kivisild, S. Rootsi, M. Metspalu, S. Mastana, K. Kaldma, J. Parik, E. Metspalu, M.

Adojaan, H.-V. Tolk, V. Stepanov, M. Gölge, E. Usanga, S. S. Papiha, C. Cinnioglu, R. King,

L. Cavalli-Sforza, P. A. Underhill & R. Villems, “The Genetic Heritage of the Earliest

Settlers Persists Both in Indian Tribal and Caste Populations,” American Journal of Human

Genetics and the Aryan Debate / p. 13

Genetics 72(2):313-32, 2003.

16

Mait Metspalu, Toomas Kivisild, Ene Metspalu, Jüri Parik, Georgi Hudjashov, Katrin

Kaldma, Piia Serk, Monika Karmin, Doron M Behar, M Thomas P Gilbert, Phillip Endicott,

Sarabjit Mastana, Surinder S. Papiha, Karl Skorecki, Antonio Torroni & Richard Villem,

“Most of the extant mtDNA boundaries in South and Southwest Asia were likely shaped

during the initial settlement of Eurasia by anatomically modern humans,” BMC Genetics

2004, 5:26.

17

Sanghamitra Sengupta, Lev A. Zhivotovsky, Roy King, S. Q. Mehdi, Christopher A.

Edmonds, Cheryl-Emiliane T. Chow, Alice A. Lin, Mitashree Mitra, Samir K. Sil, A.

Ramesh, M. V. Usha Rani, Chitra M. Thakur, L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Partha P. Majumder, &

Peter A. Underhill, “Polarity and Temporality of High-Resolution Y-Chromosome

Distributions in India Identify Both Indigenous and Exogenous Expansions and Reveal

Minor Genetic Influence of Central Asian Pastoralists,” American Journal of Human

Genetics, February 2006; 78(2):202-21. (Italics in one of the quotations are mine.)

18

Sanghamitra Sahoo, Anamika Singh, G. Himabindu, Jheelam Banerjee, T. Sitalaximi, Sonali

Gaikwad, R. Trivedi, Phillip Endicott, Toomas Kivisild, Mait Metspalu, Richard Villems, &

V. K. Kashyap, “A prehistory of Indian Y chromosomes: Evaluating demic diffusion

scenarios,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 24 January 2006, vol. 103,

No. 4, pp. 843–848. (Italics in one of the quotations are mine.)

19

Colin Renfrew, Archaeology and Language: the Puzzle of Indo-European Origins (London:

Penguin Books, 1989).

20

Lluís Quintana-Murci, Raphaëlle Chaix, R. Spencer Wells, Doron M. Behar, Hamid Sayar,

Rosaria Scozzari, Chiara Rengo, Nadia Al-Zahery, Ornella Semino, A. Silvana Santachiara-

Benerecetti, Alfredo Coppa, Qasim Ayub, Aisha Mohyuddin, Chris Tyler-Smith, S. Qasim

Mehdi, Antonio Torroni, & Ken McElreavey, “Where West Meets East: The Complex

mtDNA Landscape of the Southwest and Central Asian Corridor,” American Journal of

Human Genetics 74(5):827-45, May 2004.

21

Vincent Macaulay, Catherine Hill, Alessandro Achilli, Chiara Rengo, Douglas Clarke,

William Meehan, James Blackburn, Ornella Semino, Rosaria Scozzari, Fulvio Cruciani, Adi

Taha, Norazila Kassim Shaari,6 Joseph Maripa Raja, Patimah Ismail, Zafarina Zainuddin,

William Goodwin, David Bulbeck, Hans-Jürgen Bandelt, Stephen Oppenheimer, Antonio

Torroni, Martin Richards, “Single, Rapid Coastal Settlement of Asia Revealed by Analysis of

Complete Mitochondrial Genomes,” Science 13 May 2005, vol. 308, No. 5724, pp. 1034-36.

22

Stephen Oppenheimer, The Real Eve: Modern Man’s Journey out of Africa (New York:

Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2003). See an introduction to Oppenheimer’s theory on the

website:

www.bradshawfoundation.com.

23

Hannah V. A. James & Michael D. Petraglia, “Modern Human Origins and the Evolution of

Behavior in the Later Pleistocene Record of South Asia,” Current Anthropology vol. 46,

Supplement, December 2005, pp. S3-S27.

Genetics and the Aryan Debate / p. 14

24

William F. Allman, “Eve Explained: How Ancient Humans Spread Across the Earth” (on the

website of Discovery Channel, 21 August 2004).

25

Stephen Oppenheimer, The Real Eve, op. cit., p. 152.

26

See note 15 above.

http://www.archaeologyonline.net/artifacts/genetics-aryan-debate.html

GENETICS AND THE ARYAN DEBATE

Background

Along with the birth of anthropology, the nineteenth century saw the development of semi-scientific to wholly unscientific disciplines, such as anthropometry, craniometry or phrenology. Unquestioningly accepting the prevalent concept of race, some scientists constructed facial and nasal indexes or claimed to measure the skull’s volume for every race, of course with the result that the white race’s cranium was the most capacious and its owner, therefore, the most intelligent; others went further, insisting that amidst the white race, only the Germans were the “pure” descendants of the “Aryan race” which was destined the rule the earth.

In India, from 1891 onward, Herbert H. Risley, an official with the colonial government, set about defining in all seriousness 2,378 castes belonging to 43 “races,” all of it on the basis of a “nasal index.” The main racial groups were Indo-Aryan, Turko- Iranian, Scytho-Dravidian, Aryo-Dravidian, Mongoloid and Mongolo-Dravidian.

Unfortunately, this imaginative but wholly unscientific work weighed heavily on the first developments of Indian anthropology; in the 1930s, for instance, B. S. Guha studied skeletons from Mohenjo-daro and submitted a detailed report on the proto- Australoid, Mediterranean, Mongoloid and Alpine races peopling the city, all of them “non-Aryan” of course. Long lists of such fictitious races filled academic publications, and continue to be found in Indian textbooks today.

In the wake of World War II, the concept of race collapsed in the West. Rather late in the day, anthropologists realized that race cannot be scientifically defined, much less measured, thus setting at naught a whole century of scholarly divagations on “superior” and “inferior” races. Following in the footsteps of pioneers like Franz Boas,1 leading scientists, such as Ashley Montagu,2 now argued strongly against the “fallacy of race.” It is only with the emergence of more reliable techniques in biological anthropology that anthropometry got a fresh chance; it concentrated not on trying to categorize noses or spot “races,” but on tracing the evolution of a population, on signs of continuity or disruption, and on possible kinships between neighbouring populations.

In the Indian context, we are now familiar with the work of U.S anthropologists Kenneth Kennedy, John Lukacs and Brian Hemphill.3 Their chief conclusion, as far as the Aryan debate is concerned, is that there is no trace of “demographic disruption” in the North-West of the subcontinent between 4500 and 800 BCE; this negates the possibility of any massive intrusion, by so-called Indo-Aryans or other populations, during that period.

Die-hard proponents of such an invasion / migration have therefore been compelled to downscale it to a “trickle-in” infiltration,4 limited enough to have left no physical trace, although they are at pains to explain how a “trickle” was able to radically alter India’s linguistic and cultural landscape when much more massive invasions of the historical period failed to do so.5 Other proponents still insist that “the Indo-Aryan immigrants seem to have been numerous and strong enough to continue and disseminate much of their culture,”6 but do not explain how the “immigrants” failed to leave any trace in the anthropological record.

A powerful new tool

In the 1980s, another powerful tool of inquiry came on the scene: genetics, with its growing ability to read the history contained in a human body’s three billion bits of information. In particular, techniques used in the identification of genetic markers have been fast improving, leading to a wide array of applications, from therapeutics to crime detection to genealogy. Let us first summarize the basic definitions relevant to our field.

In trying to reconstruct ancestry, biologists use two types of DNA, the complex molecule that carries genetic information. The first, Y-DNA, is contained in the Y- chromosome, one of the two sex chromosomes; it is found in the cell’s nucleus and is transmitted from father to son. The second, mtDNA or mitochondrial DNA, is found in mitochondria, kinds of power generators found in a cell, but outside its nucleus; this mtDNA is independent of the Y-DNA, simpler in structure, and transmitted by the mother alone. For various reasons, all this genetic material undergoes slight alterations or “mutations” in the course of time; those mutations then become characteristic of the line of descendants: if, for instance, the mtDNAs of two humans, however distant geographically, exhibit the same mutation, they necessarily share a common ancestor in the maternal line.

Much of the difficulty lies in organizing those mutations, or genetic markers, in consistent categories called “haplotypes” (from a Greek word meaning “single”), which constitute an individual’s genetic fingerprint. Similar haplotypes are then brought together in “haplogroups,” each of which genetically identifies a particular ethnic group. Such genetic markers can then be used to establish a “genetic distance” between two populations.

Identifying and making sense of the right genetic markers is not the only difficulty; dating their mutations remains a major challenge: on average, a marker of Y- DNA may undergo one mutation every 500 generations, but sudden changes caused by special circumstances can never be ruled out. Genetics, therefore, needs the inputs from palaeontology and archaeology, among other disciplines, to confirm its historical conclusions.

India’s case

Since the 1990s, there have been numerous genetic studies of Indian populations, often reaching apparently divergent conclusions. There are three reasons for this: (1) the Indian region happens to be one of the most diverse and complex in the world, which makes it difficult to interpret the data; (2) early studies relied on too limited samples, of the order of a few dozens, when hundreds or ideally thousands of samples are required for some statistical reliability; (3) some of the early studies fell into the old trap of trying to equate linguistic groups with distinct ethnic entities — a relic of the nineteenth-century erroneous identification between language and race; as a result, a genetic connection between North Indians and Central Asians was automatically taken to confirm an Aryan invasion in the second millennium BCE, disregarding a number of alternative explanations.7

More recent studies, using larger samples and much refined methods of analysis, both at the conceptual level and in the laboratory, have reached very different conclusions (interestingly, some of their authors had earlier gone along with the old Aryan paradigm8). We will summarize here the chief results of nine studies from various Western and Indian Universities, most of them conducted by international teams of biologists, and more than half of them in the last three years; since their papers are complex and technical, what follows is, necessarily, highly simplified and represents only a small part of their content.

The first such study dates back to 1999 and was conducted by the Estonian biologist Toomas Kivisild, a pioneer in the field, with fourteen co-authors from various nationalities (including M. J. Bamshad).9 It relied on 550 samples of mtDNA and identified a haplogroup called “U” as indicating a deep connection between Indian and Western-Eurasian populations. However, the authors opted for a very remote separation of the two branches, rather than a recent population movement towards India; in fact, “the subcontinent served as a pathway for eastward migration of modern humans” from Africa, some 40,000 years ago:

In other words, the timescale posited by the Aryan invasion / migration framework is inadequate, and the genetic affinity between the Indian subcontinent and Europe “should not be interpreted in terms of a recent admixture of western Caucasoids10 with Indians caused by a putative Indo-Aryan invasion 3,000–4,000 years BP.”

The second study was published just a month later. Authored by U.S. biological anthropologist Todd R. Disotell,11 it dealt with the first migration of modern man from Africa towards Asia, and found that migrations into India “did occur, but rarely from western Eurasian populations.” Disotell made observations very similar to those of the preceding paper:

Here again, the Eurasian connection is therefore traced to the original migration out of Africa. On the genetic level, “the supposed Aryan invasion of India 3000-4000 years ago was much less significant than is generally believed.”

A year later, thirteen Indian scientists led by Susanta Roychoudhury studied 644 samples of mtDNA from some ten Indian ethnic groups, especially from the East and South.12 They found “a fundamental unity of mtDNA lineages in India, in spite of the extensive cultural and linguistic diversity,” pointing to “a relatively small founding group of females in India.” Significantly, “most of the mtDNA diversity observed in Indian populations is between individuals within populations; there is no significant structuring of haplotype diversity by socio-religious affiliation, geographical location of habitat or linguistic affiliation.” That is a crucial observation, which later studies will endorse: on the maternal side at least, there is no such thing as a “Hindu” or “Muslim” genetic identity, nor even a high- or low-caste one, a North- or South-Indian one — hence the expressive title of the study: “Fundamental genomic unity of ethnic India is revealed by analysis of mitochondrial DNA.”

The authors also noted that haplogroup “U,” already noted by Kivisild et al. as being common to North Indian and “Caucasoid” populations, was found in tribes of eastern India such as the Lodhas and Santals, which would not be the case if it had been introduced through Indo-Aryans. Such is also the case of the haplogroup “M,” another marker frequently mentioned in the early literature as evidence of the invasion: in reality, “we have now shown that indeed haplogroup M occurs with a high frequency, averaging about 60%, across most Indian population groups, irrespective of geographical location of habitat. We have also shown that the tribal populations have higher frequencies of haplogroup M than caste populations.”

Also in 2000, twenty authors headed by Kivisild contributed a chapter to a book on the “archaeogenetics” of Europe.13 They first stressed the importance of the mtDNA haplogroup “M” common to India (with a frequency of 60%), Central and Eastern Asia (40% on average), and even to American Indians; however, this frequency drops to 0.6% in Europe, which is “inconsistent with the ‘general Caucasoidness’ of Indians.”

This shows, once again, that “the Indian maternal gene pool has come largely through an autochthonous history since the Late Pleistocene.” The authors then studied the “U” haplogroup, finding its frequency to be 13% in India, almost 14% in North-West Africa, and 24% from Europe to Anatolia; but, in their opinion, “Indian and western Eurasian haplogroup U varieties differ profoundly; the split has occurred about as early as the split between the Indian and eastern Asian haplogroup M varieties. The data show that both M and U exhibited an expansion phase some 50,000 years ago, which should have happened after the corresponding splits.” In other words, there is a genetic connection between India and Europe, but a far more ancient one than was thought.

Another important point is that looking at mtDNA as a whole, “even the high castes share more than 80 per cent of their maternal lineages with the lower castes and tribals”; this obviously runs counter to the invasionist thesis. Taking all aspects into consideration, the authors conclude: “We believe that there are now enough reasons not only to question a ‘recent Indo-Aryan invasion’ into India some 4000 BP, but alternatively to consider India as a part of the common gene pool ancestral to the diversity of human maternal lineages in Europe.” Mark the word “ancestral.”

After a gap of three years, Kivisild directed two fresh studies. The first, with nine

colleagues, dealt with the origin of languages and agriculture in India.14 Those biologists stressed India’s genetic complexity and antiquity, since “present-day Indians [possess] at least 90 per cent of what we think of as autochthonous Upper Palaeolithic maternal lineages.” They also observed that “the Indian mtDNA tree in general [is] not subdivided according to linguistic (Indo-European, Dravidian) or caste affiliations,” which again demonstrates the old error of conflating language and race or ethnic group.

Then, in a new development, they punched holes in the methodology followed by studies basing themselves on the Y-DNA (the paternal line) to establish the Aryan invasion, and point out that if one were to extend their logic to populations of Eastern and Southern India, one would be led to an exactly opposite result: “the straightforward suggestion would be that both Neolithic (agriculture) and Indo-European languages arose in India and from there, spread to Europe.” The authors do not defend this thesis, but simply guard against “misleading interpretations” based on limited samples and faulty methodology.

And there go the much-touted "Vaishnava" superior, shuddha-sattvika qualities of forbearance and poise up in smoke! Truth Absolute can at times be quite unpalatable for many, and for this reason it is generally relegated to the backwaters by the masses who prefer to embrace less recondite conceptions and definitions of reality. Those who want to indulge themselves such are certainly free to do so!

Referring to the contempt some Hindus show for people born in lower castes, Vivekananda said, "How easy it is to speak glibly of Vedanta, how difficult to follow its least precept." I think it was Gandhi who said, "India was lost the day we invented the word mleccha". Contempt for others is always incompatible with advaita darshan. This is the powerful statement of verse 6 of the Ishavasya Upanishad.

 

I am in full concurrence with you on this one, and I am no casteist by any stretch of the imagination, not by a long, long, chalk. However, you seem to blithely gloss over the endless jibes and taunts that these Yank goras gratuitously sling at generic Hinduism, mainstream Hindus and our holy land of Bharata. If they cannot respect the cultural and spiritual milieu from which their own adopted mysticism stems, they only deserve to be put in their proper place. I surely have not the slightest regret for calling cbrahma a low life mleccha - he is one. And on this, I shall heed him and bid farewell to this fatuous "debate", more of a hullabaloo if you ask me; this is my final input here, and I pronounce in earnest that I won't be back, not even to read the replies anymore. Namaskar Ganeshprasadji.

PS: Malati, I shall provide you with the Ramakrishna and Chinmaya links, once I have them in handy. Pranams to you.

Lastly, cbrahma, just care to mull over this a little:

You can rave and rant all you want about what you think are Prabhupada's qualifications, the point is, his lack of scholarship is a frequent theme of discourse amongst academics who care to concern themselves with the metaphysical nonentity that Gaudiya Vaishnavism is.

Finally you show your true colors. Finally you make some attempt , as shoddy as it is, to make some sort of case. You are an obvious offender at the lotus feet of a saint , Srila Prabhupada. That is the substance of your so-called knowledgeable attack - which only confirms what was obvious from the beginning - ignorance spawned of hollow tamasic pride.

Your so-called saint was himself an offender of the highest magnitude, devoting such an inordinate proportion of his simplistic theological lucubrations to belittling every other path besides his own. In the end, I cannot judge you too harshly. Being a lowborn, tamasika mleccha with no hope of salvation in this life and the next, you obviously view ACBSP as your saviour, which he is, and that probably explains why you're so smug in the shelter of your teeny-weeny Swami Prabhupada cocoon. As a veritable heir to the original Vedic tradition, I can only feel compassion for low life forms, and as such, this will be my ultimate contribution to this thread. No point in arguing with kids. I'm messaging you privately with something that in my evaluation should be mandatory reading for you.

Om Tat Sat

Ganeshprasadbhai,

Better leave this idiotic thread and let them geezers delude themselves into thinking that their sorry shortage of gnosis is indeed the opposite of what we know it is. You and I would have more success teaching a monkey how to shave itself than to knock any quantity of sense in the minds of some present here. Yet, if they feel like gaining some shiksha that is worth the appellation, they do know where to find us.

Radhe Radhe

 

Watching all these unfold, I thought I was watching Melbourne Comedy Week, until I realized we were talking serious business here.

 

The problem with you LOB is that you never cited any verse or reference to buttress your position.

 

Ok, show me where I can buy the Bhagavad Gita that you said was imperative read so I can cogitate:deal: over truth. And I'm serious, ok

Malatiji, I am not a lumberjack to indulge in this cutting and pasting business. And most of my e-documents on Advaita Vedanta are in PDF, which does pose a kind of problem for quoting material and verses on this sort of forum. You want a reference, fine, consult the Gita translations with commentary of either the Chinmaya or Ramakrishna missions, and you shall see how sound and universalistic these are, compared with the exclusivist Semitic-type kanishtha sectarianism of the personal god sects. If I have some more time, I shall provide you with links in case I manage to locate these awesome texts online, because I only have access to hard copies of them as we speak.

[quoteAnd you're a lover of bhagavata??]

I am not an 'ISKCONite'. I have read Prabhupada's books however and know his qualifications for writing them. How much of the Srimad Bhagavatam have you read? Or Bhaktivinode Thakur's Sri Caitanya-siksamrta? How much of the Vedas have you translated?

So far you have displayed no knowledge at all. You simply make pompous ad hominem pronouncements based on speculations about my relationship with ISKCON. Takleberry is a self-proclaimed ISKCONite and yet you speak on his behalf.

Your pompous declarations prove nothing and furthermore one need only the Bhagavad Gita to refute the claim about worshiping the 'devatas'.

You don't even have the elementary school understanding of what you are debating.

I spent nearly 15 years as a Vaishnava before recently kicking that hollow and empty doctrine to the dustbin, so I'm well familiar with all of Bhaktivedanta Swami's works, those of other GV and non-Gaudiya Vaishnava practitioners and whatever else you may think corroborates your rudimentary ideas on Vedic dharma. How much of personalism derives from the ancient Vedantic and Upanishadic basis and how much of it springs from the imagination of its medieval founders, I know infinitely more than you do, and could lecture you at great length about. If all you can do is to return my points against me, then I don't see the reason for continuing this ridiculous discussion. You can rave and rant all you want about what you think are Prabhupada's qualifications, the point is, his lack of scholarship is a frequent theme of discourse amongst academics who care to concern themselves with the metaphysical nonentity that Gaudiya Vaishnavism is. On this I close my case, but I would still advise you to ask tackleberry for that link to the Maadhvas' review of the Bhagavad-gita As It Is. It would do you a world of good in fact to peruse that one.

Then again, if you wish to learn more of true spirituality, message me privately, and I'll be happy to help increment your grasp of genuine mysticism.

If you are going to attack somebody's education - you are certainly begging for them to lay down their credentials. You have no problem making such attacks on this forum but you won't declare your claims to education, that you constantly infer? Your childish arrogance is only superceded by your illogic.

 

The substance of your attack, as thin as it is, is really directed to Srila Prabhupada, my siksa guru, whose words you essentially are condescending to call infantile. Nevertheless you have to do much better than that to be convincing.

You have so much homework to do, man. And from this piece from you, it is clear that you haven't got a clue on what I'm talking about. Being an armchair GV follower, you are completely unaware of the countless criticisms that Bhaktivedanta's writings have received from Sanskritists, and for you to hang on to your original position in typical bible-bashing style, you thereby display your lack of maturity and knowledge. Wake up and get a reality check.

You have no idea of what I've read. You are a rank speculator and an offender at the lotus feet of a pure devotee, and I don't mean me. I have read Prabhupada's books which consist of far more than magazines. Your characterization is simplistic and childish.

I suppose that you must've heard of the innumerable mistakes in his books (I never referred to magazines), hence the need for his senior disciples to edit these works. Your posts are so preposterous, cbrahma, that this will be my last reply to you. You are just not worth having a conversation with. If real religion interests you, message me privately and I will educate you all about it.

Yes since, Bhagavad Gita is Veda, then I have quoted Vedas. You have, in your infantile posturing questioned it and called it in error. The burden of proof (do you know what that means) rests on you to refute the acaryas translation. It is hardly an established fact that it is in error simply because you say so. Who are you?

Give it up, cbrahma. You don't have it in yourself to win this discussion, as poor and as limited as your spiritual knowledge is. Your arguments are like those of somebody who's never been to school. Ask your pal tackleberry to provide you with the link of the Maadhvas' review of Prabhupada's Gita and you will be in for a shock, that much I assure you. Grab authentic translations of the BG and Bhagavata and it will be plain to you that these scriptures actually convey meanings that are a far cry from the simplistic, puerile ISKCONian cultism. Then again, keep cogitating over truth and perhaps in your next birth, you will get in contact with a real satguru.

Going by your ridiculous logic, christianity must be the greatest religion because it has got billion followers. Advaita is nothing in comparison to christianity, right? Dvaita is only for satvik souls. And because there are more number of taamasa-s in the kali yuga, it isn't surprising that tamasic religions like advaita, christianity etc. have the highest membership.

 

And speak of logic and advaita...don't make me laugh. Jayatirtha, the foremost amongst the dvaita scholars, has shown how the flaw called 'upajivya virodha' destroys the very foundation of advaita, thus making every other pathetic attempt of the advaitins immaterial. But I don't want to hurt your feelings by exposing more and more of advaita's weaknesses. Read the KanDaNa Traya of Madhvacharya to get a better idea on how fragile advaita is.

Wake up, tackleboy. Dvaita "saints" have never been able to convert more than a handful, and all this circular reasoning on your part is just a regurgitation of propaganda that only the marginalised Tattvavadis believe. The fact is, Dvaita rests on a minuscule fringe of India's religious landscape, and you can throw all that you've got at me, I shall repeat - personalism is for the babies. Maybe in your next life, you shall wake up as to what constitutes true dharma. Madhvacharya's opinion matters as much to me as the posterior of a rodent, hence whatever he may hold as valid gets no traction with me.